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Chapter 3: On the Futility of Contention

This is illogical. You will say: Then what logic is there? This is paradoxical. He says: If you have too much you will be poor, if you resist you will be broken, if you don’t yield you will not survive. It would have been good if Darwin had met Lao Tzu. Darwin says: Survival of the fittest. This is logic, simple, clean logic, mathematics - everybody can understand, you can make it understood by even a primary-school boy. It is simple - that life is a struggle and the fittest survive. If Charles Darwin had met Lao Tzu somewhere, he missed, because Lao Tzu would have laughed loudly. He says that the humblest survive, not the fittest; in fact, the unfittest survive, not the fittest - they are doomed to fail.

This is his whole base: whatsoever your logic says is not going to happen. Life does not listen to your logic, it goes on its own way, undisturbed. You have to listen to life, life will not listen to your logic, it does not bother about your logic. Lao Tzu is one of the keenest, and he is keenest because he is very innocent - with childlike eyes he has observed life. He has not brought any idea to put into it, he has simply observed whatsoever is the case; he has simply reported that.

When you move into life, what do you see? A great storm comes, and big trees fall. They should survive according to Charles Darwin; they are the fittest, strongest, most powerful. Look at an ancient tree, three hundred feet high, three thousand years old. Mmm.the very presence of the tree creates strength, gives a feeling of strength and power. With millions of roots spread inside the earth, having gone deep, the tree is standing with power. Of course the tree fights - it doesn’t want to yield, to surrender - but after the storm it has fallen, it is dead, it is no longer alive and all that strength has gone. The storm was too much - the storm is always too much, because the storm comes from the whole and a tree is just an individual.

Then there are small plants and ordinary grass - when the storm comes, the grass yields, and the storm cannot do any harm to it. At the most it can give it a good cleansing, that’s all; all the dirt that has gathered on it is washed away. The storm gives it a good bath, and when the storm has gone the small plants and the grass are again dancing high. The grass has almost no roots, it can be pulled out by a small child, but the storm was defeated. What happened?

The grass followed Lao Tzu and the big tree followed Charles Darwin. The big tree was very logical, it tried to resist, it tried to show its strength. If you try to show your strength you will be defeated. All Hitlers, all Napoleons, all Alexanders are big trees, strong trees. They are all defeated. Lao Tzus are just like small plants, nobody can defeat them because they are always ready to yield. How can you defeat a person who says, “I am already defeated,” who says, “Sir, you enjoy your victory, there is no need to create any trouble, I’m defeated,” who yields? Even an Alexander will feel before a Lao Tzu that he is futile, that he cannot do anything. It happened, it happened exactly like that..

A sannyasin by the name of Dandani existed in the days of Alexander, when Alexander came to India. When Alexander was coming toward India, his friends told him, “When you come back you should bring a sannyasin, because that rare flower flowers only in India. Bring a sannyasin. You will bring many things but don’t forget to bring a sannyasin; we would like to see the phenomenon of sannyas, what it is, what exactly a sannyasin is.”